Spotify and its Discontents

Walking—dazed—through a flea market in Greenwich Village, taking in the skewered meats, the empanadas, and the dumb T-shirts, I came across a fugitive salesman, probably near sixty years old, in a ripped Allman Brothers T-shirt. Like a technicolor mirage, he was hawking CDs and singing along to “You Don’t Love Me,” which was blaring, a tad trebly, from a boom box atop a fold-out table.

I spent much of my time, and some of my happiest hours, hanging out in record stores—until they all disappeared about five years ago. So I was relieved to see this funky dude and his valuables, because I knew how to behave in the presence of funky dudes and their coveted records. I nodded and smiled and proceeded to evaluate the merchandise. As I flipped through his CDs, the cases clacked against one another, and the familiar sound not only restored a sense of equilibrium within me, but generated the rumblings of anticipation—a fluttery response in my gut, the slim possibility that, hidden within the stacks, was an album that would alter my perception, just enough, so as to restore the wonder and blue-sky beauty of the ordinary world.

I spotted a Paul Butterfield recording that looked promising, and though I no longer owned a CD player, I wanted to buy it. But the cost was fifteen bucks, and I only had ten in my wallet, and there was no A.T.M. in sight. Holding the Butterfield CD, wrapped in cellophane, the psychedelic cover a piece of artwork in its own right, it suddenly seemed inconceivable I could live without the album, lest I wished to lead a life of regret and unfulfilled desire.

Since I was at a flea market, I called out to the proprietor and offered him my ten bucks, to which he replied, in so many words, that I could take said money and, for all he cared, chuck it in the East River—fifteen bucks or no deal. Well, I told him, that’s not very nice, and a bit unreasonable, as I could easily, in the comfort of my own home, dig up the Butterfield album on Spotify, and listen to it for free. “Whatever you prefer,” he said, as if there were really a choice. I responded with a big laugh—a chortle—the condescending kind reserved for prickly geezers who, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, cling to the last vestiges of a dead world. “Whipping Post” began to play out of his boom box, and, as he sang along, I walked away, his raspy voice, and Berry Oakley’s distorted bass line, fading in my wake.

After returning to my apartment, I powered up my computer and, without any hassle, quickly located the Butterfield album, whose track listing was laid out on the screen like an account ledger. This was supposed to be a victory of sorts, but I was quickly overcome by the blunt banality of the moment. In front of me was not only the album I desired, but also every other Butterfield recording ever made. And once I sampled and sated my hunger for Paul Butterfield’s blues, I could locate just about any recording ever made. But what, I wondered, were the consequences?

I recall buying Ryan Adams’s “Heartbreaker” almost three years after its initial release. This was before I’d heard of Whiskeytown, or had discovered the alt-country genre, so I’ll admit, until then, my reasons for avoiding Adams were pretty stupid. In fact, there weren’t even reasons, there was just a reason: his name was too close to that wanking Canadian who wrote “The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You”—and therefore he was guilty by association and not worthy of a monetary investment.

But I had been told by enough reliable people that I had misconceptions, and on a day when I’d already spent two hours in a tiny record shop in Burlington, Vermont, and had four prospective purchases in my hand, but only enough money for one—CDs weren’t cheap—the scrawny clerk sold me on Adams, not because he wanted me out of the shop, but because he wanted to extol the virtues of “Heartbreaker” and to contextualize it for me. When I returned to my dorm, I unwrapped the cellophane and turned the album over in my hands, flirting with it, searching for clues about what lay within. The cover image of the singer seemed to tell the story of a man who, perhaps in order to avoid great pain, had entered oblivion, but done so in style, with a cool cigarette sticking straight out of his mouth. The question was: How did he get to oblivion, and why did he seek it out in the first place? The answer, needless to say, was the CD itself: the music, the sonic promise.

I’m trying to describe an intricate process, crucial to forming a lasting, meaningful relationship with a piece of art. Because if I was going to buy a CD, back when I bought them, I had to eke out some time, and even pray for a little luck, as I could spend hours in a dimly lit store, and leave with nothing. So I had to make a conscious decision that I was going to take my chances. And once that was decided, there was still the journey to the shop, and the browsing, and, depending on the outcome, either the very long, or very giddy, return home. And even then, of course, there was still the possibility that the album would suck.

We seem to have created an environment in which wonderful music, newly discovered, is difficult to treasure. For treasures, as the fugitive salesman in the flea market was implying, are hard to come by—you have to work to find them. And the function of fugitive salesmen is to slow the endless deluge, drawing our attention to one album at a time, creating demand not for what we need to survive but for what we yearn for. Because how else can you form a relationship with a record when you’re cursed with the knowledge that, just an easy click away, there might be something better, something crucial and cataclysmic? The tyranny of selection is the opposite of freedom. And the more you click, the more you enhance the disposability of your endeavor.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, over the last half decade, very few new albums have stuck with me—I just don’t spend the time with them anymore. Sure, I’ve enjoyed lots of stuff, but I lose interest after a couple listens, bowing to my waning attention span, my anxiety that there’s too much to listen to, and not enough time to take it all in. It’s like going to a large foreign country for a week, and, instead of getting the feel for one glorious city, trying to hit all the sites so you can prove you saw them. And this is, I think, one downer of the digital revolution: the Internet frees up cultural treasures while simultaneously eroding the mechanisms that endow them with value. But hey man, “Whatever you prefer.”